Bard Ermentrout, RAMbrandt

Bard Ermentrout was the creator of the popular Atari graphics program RAMbrandt. Subtitled "The Atari Design Studio," RAMbrandt was released in 1985 by Antic software. Written in ValForth, it supported joystick, keyboard, Koala Pad, and Atari Touch Tablet for input. He also created an add-on Solid Object Module which allowed users to combine mode 9 geometric primitives to make what appeared to be 3D-shaded objects.  The predecessor to RAMbrandt was a drawing program called "Paint 10" which was unreleased.

This interview took place on July 25, 2016.

After the interview, Bard sent me a box of floppy disks — which appears to contain the source code for RAMbrandt, some picture disks, and the object module — but so far I have not been able to read any of the disks. It doesn't look good, but I haven't given up hope yet.

"I had some crazy ideas with the Atari 800 to get more colors, one of them which worked but gave you a really bad headache."

AtariMania's list of Bard's software: http://www.atarimania.com/list_utilities_atari-400-800-xl-xe-ermentrout-bard_team_2342_8_U.html

Bard's page at University of Pittsburgh: http://www.mathematics.pitt.edu/person/g-bard-ermentrout

Caramel Knowledge film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgU6vgi8dQ

Antic magazine review of Rambrandt: http://www.atarimagazines.com/v7n7/ProductReviews.html